


until we get it right

by heroisms (tiny_white_hats)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Community: twrarepairfest, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, season 3a retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 21:09:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2323274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_white_hats/pseuds/heroisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s an accident, the first time Allison kisses him."<br/>Or, a retelling of season 3a where Allison and Isaac keep accidentally falling back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	until we get it right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laheysmythes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laheysmythes/gifts).



> for laheyjackson on tumblr for the TW Rare Pair Exchange, who requested, among other things, "friends to lovers/friends with benefits." I had a great time writing this for you, and I hope that you really enjoy reading it!

It’s an accident, the first time Allison kisses him. There is fire in her veins and blood on her face and she is grinning as if she were possessed. Isaac is laughing, turning to grin at her, beautiful and savage all at once, as the twins retreat. Ethan is forcing Aiden, whose thick neck is dripping with his own blood, to walk away. Ethan’s shirt is tattered, yet still in better shape than Isaac’s, but all of his wounds have healed; it is the arrow buried in the meat of Aiden’s neck that drives them off. This, Allison thinks as she watches them go, is the most alive she has ever felt.  


The twins had found them after school let out, forcing Allison and Isaac into the woods creeping up on the lacrosse field with the promise of a parking lot massacre if they didn’t follow. They must have looked like easy prey without an alpha to back them up, and after Aiden’s suspension, they were looking for a fight they would win.  


Maybe it is the thrill of winning a fight or just of fighting itself, a human and a beta forcing back two alphas, or maybe it’s at getting his payback, but Isaac keeps laughing happily. He is golden in the autumn light, and it must be the blood still singing like fire through her veins, but she wants to feel his hair slip between her fingers, wants to press all of her against all of him in front of this curtain of tree trunks and orange leaves.  


“Are you okay?” Isaac asks, his laugh dying down. There is a cut running down her arm and now that her heartbeat is slowing, she can feel the sluggish pulse of her blood leaking out and the sharp pain of the wound. There are bruises littered across her body like a constellation and a few smaller cuts, but most of the blood she wears isn’t hers. Werewolves, she’s noticed, are far less scared of their own blood being spilled than most.  


Isaac steps closer to her, eyes on the gash on her forearm, and he trails careful fingers down the line of the wound. The gesture seems unconscious, and he closes his fingers around her wrist to begin to leech away some of her pain. This wasn’t the way things were between them; they were barely even friends, not close enough to exchange touches this carelessly.  


The pain in her arm bleeds away, and Allison sighs. Isaac leaves his hand on her wrist, but looks up to meet her gaze.  


“Better?” Isaac looks at her with something akin to worry, and she is amazed to see something tender in his eyes for a girl who’d done her best to kill him, just months ago. “Do you need to go to the hospital? Or, there might be a first aid kit back at the loft, but knowing Derek, there also might not be, but we could probably patch you up there.” He trails off awkwardly, unused to speaking this much to her, or this kindly.  


Before either of them can say anything more, Allison steps into his space and kisses him.  


It was some kind of madness, she would tell herself later, battle lust and bloodlust mixing in with regular old lust and driving her mad. It was the thrill of fighting, of not being sidelined or shooting safe at a distance, it was the adrenaline and the heat and blood singing in her veins, it was Isaac’s smile, the first honest and bright one she’d ever seen from him.  


Her hands slip into his hair when he responds, almost instantly, as if he wasn’t surprised at all. She moves closer, bodies lining up in parallel, and they fit against one another as if they were born for just this, as if they were always meant to find themselves pressed against one another like books on a shelf, out here in the woods with violence in their blood.  


*  


It is nearly a week before they speak again, not until that weekend, as the cross country team is settling like a plague upon the Glen Capri Motel. She is too proud to follow after him and Isaac, she fears, still remembers the feeling of her knives cutting through his flesh, and is too afraid to step closer to her. It is nothing less than she deserves.  


Still, it is burning up inside of her, this thing that had happened between them. But she is too proud to come to him first, too kind to force her way into his space, or so she tells herself, so she doesn’t have to admit that maybe she is a little bit afraid of what he might say to her.  


But soon enough, sooner than she deserves, he is there, before her. “Listen,” he says, bizarrely imposing in the narrow, too-dark corridors of the Glen Capri Motel, “can we talk?”  


“Of course.” Allison walks with him down the hall and out into the parking lot. Isaac sits down on a bench outside, far enough from the motel that there is no danger of being overheard, and Allison takes a seat beside him on the far edge of the wooden bench.  


“You helped us last night,” Isaac says, after a pause that nearly suffocates Allison. “Why?”  


“Why wouldn’t I?”  


“In my experience,” Isaac answers bitterly, “you’re not exactly in the business of keeping werewolves safe and sound.”  


There is really nothing she can say to that; with the exception of Scott, his accusation is uncomfortably true.  


“I’m in the business of keeping Beacon Hills safe and sound,” she says. Allison is not yet sure how she fits in this town now, not sure where she stands on the playing field she helped her grandfather rearrange last spring, not yet sure where she stands with anybody but her father and Lydia. Still, she is sure of her duty.  


“Right,” Isaac nods, smirking as sharply as a knife blade. “Gotta protect the townspeople from those nasty werewolves, huh?”  


“That’s not what I meant.”  


“No?”  


“No.”  


Isaac looks at her, head tilted to the side in a surprisingly lupine gesture. Allison wonders sometimes where the line between human and wolf falls, how different it must be for Scott, who values control over his own power, and Isaac, who sometimes seems more wolf than boy. She thinks about the way Erica’s smile had been with all thirty two teeth, and how sometimes Isaac’s words will rumble like a growl in his chest.  


“What did you mean?” he asks.  


“I just don’t want to see anybody else get hurt.”  


Isaac does not rush to respond to that. He sits, brow furrowed just slightly, and just looks at her. His face is hard to read, but she thinks he almost looks considering, like he’s never really seen her before.  


“Neither do I.” He paused, then grinned, sharply and unexpectedly. There is something bloodthirsty in that flash of teeth that makes Allison shiver, and something like attraction curls like smoke in her gut. “Except for the twins. I think maybe I’d really like to see them get hurt.”  


Allison thinks of the way fury had felt running through her veins, of how she had once tried to slay her enemies and felt more powerful for it, until she had realized she was fighting against her own side. There had been something that felt like justice in that, in making monsters cower and taking her own strength in hand, and she thinks that maybe she’d like to see the real monsters get hurt.  


She leans in, crowding into Isaac’s space, and says, smiling, “I bet we can make that happen.”  


Isaac grins, all teeth, and Allison stands up to walk away. She says, “I’m sorry I kissed you, the other day,” before she can lose her courage, before she can walk away without putting this to rest. Isaac is nothing to be afraid of, but he is an unknown quantity, and Allison has always feared the weakness emotion brings. There is vulnerability here, and it takes a different kind of bravery to talk to a boy she never meant to kiss than it does to face down a whole pack of wolves.  


“Don’t be,” Isaac shakes his head, smirking at her. “I’m sure not.”  


“Hmm,” Allison smiles. “Good to know.”  


“Why’s that?” he stands. On his feet, Isaac is much taller than she, and she has to crane her neck, unwilling to be the first to break eye contact, when he steps toward her. “Planning on doing something about it?”  


“Not especially.” Her fingers brush the back of his hand, their arms hanging like vines between the two of them. Isaac’s skin is warm, even for a werewolf, and Allison thinks of how warm she would feel with all of his skin pressed against all of hers. She blushes, and a slow smile creeps up Isaac’s face.  


“That’s alright,” Isaac shrugs. “Maybe I am.”  


*  


They don’t sit together on the bus ride back, but Allison finds herself wishing that they were. It’s infuriating. A week ago she wouldn’t have even called them acquaintances, but now she’s sitting next to Lydia wishing that it was Isaac’s thigh pressed against her own and his body sharing space with hers. It’s not even that she likes him, but she’s sure she’d like the way he would look beneath her.  


She thinks about that for the entire bus ride back, until Lydia announces that they will all be spending the night at her house, to celebrate almost dying again. Boyd and Isaac try and bow out, but even as tough as they think they are, they both cave after one glare from Lydia Martin.  


And so it an odd procession that caravans out of the parking lot, Lydia and Allison leading in Allison’s car, Boyd and Isaac packed into Stiles’ Jeep, and Scott following along on the dirt bike he insists on calling a motorcycle. It’s a job and a half getting all of them into vehicles and out of the school’s parking lot, and after watching the way Isaac and Boyd had protested so much as a car ride with Stiles, Allison can’t imagine a way that this night could go well.  


She says as much to Lydia, halfway through the drive.  


Lydia rolls her eyes and tell her it will be fine.  


And, somehow, it is. They put in a movie immediately and start drinking soon after, and they are all so exhausted and terrified and fragile, that it is a relief to just be teenagers for one night, drinking while parents are out. They spread across the couches in the Martins’ television room, and are all soon sprawled against each other, too tired and tipsy and exhausted by survival to remember that they weren’t all one pack.  


“Allison,” Lydia asks, an hour into the movie, “you know where the blankets are, right? Could you grab a few, and maybe some pillows?”  


“Sure,” she agrees easily, as Lydia walks off to make more popcorn.  


“I’ll help,” Isaac, sitting beside her on the green couch, volunteers carelessly. Nobody else really pays them any attention, but Boyd’s eyes narrow. He is still wary of her, with good cause, and couldn’t seem to understand why Isaac would voluntarily be alone with her. Allison turns to lead Isaac up to the linen closet, feeling Boyd’s eyes on her the whole way up the stairs. She can’t blame him for being cautious of her, still. If their places had been reversed, Allison’s not certain that she wouldn’t have tried to kill him for it.  


As soon as they are out of mind and out of sight, Isaac steps forward to press her against the wall behind them. He leans down and just looks at her, curving one hand around her waist.  


“Is this alright?” he asks,  


Allison tugs his face down to hers, pressing her lips against his hard. “Absolutely,” she breathes.  


She is making a habit of doing all the things she shouldn’t, she thinks as she kisses her way into Isaac’s mouth. They both taste like the bitter, heavy wine that is cheap enough for high school students to afford, and there is a hint of something heavier on Isaac’s tongue, the wolfsbane Isaac, Scott, and Boyd have to lace their drinks with to feel a thing.  


She has been drinking but she is not drunk, but she thinks that gives her plausible deniability of a sort. People will forget a lot if you shrug and tell them you were drunk. The thing is, this time she is not sure how much she wishes Isaac will decide to forget. Kissing him now is as good as it was the first, accidental time, and Allison thinks that maybe the only choice more foolish than letting him kiss her again would be letting this be the last time.  


Downstairs, Scott is counting down the days until she comes back to him, Boyd is wondering where Isaac has gone, leaving him alone with another pack he barely likes, and Lydia is probably understanding too much. All of that should matter more than it does to her, but right now, Isaac’s hands are brushing down her back as if her body was some holy relic, and she cannot find it in her to care about anything beyond that.  


She steps close enough that their feet brush against each other and slips one hand into the back pocket of his jeans; he moans quietly, and she feels as powerful as she had when she’d cut him down with a knife in both hands. There is something exhilarating about making out with a boy she’s only barely friends with, with everyone they know just a floor below. But, underneath that, there’s something about kissing Isaac Lahey¸ in particular, that’s just as appealing as any exhilaration ever could be.  


“Do you think we should go back?” Isaac whispers, his voice sandpaper harsh as she crowds in closer. “I can hear them, they’re wondering where we are.”  


Allison wraps a hand around the back of his head and pulls him back to her, teeth tugging at his bottom lip. She should care, but she doesn’t. And as long as she’s here, inexplicably attached to the idea of Isaac in her arms, she doesn’t think she’s going to care about anything other than that. “Let’s just let them wonder.”  


When they finally come back downstairs, arms full of blankets and hair wild, everybody looks at them, but nobody says anything. The boys don’t look like they’ve noticed anything, too close to drunk to realize how long they’d been gone, but Lydia looks at Allison like she’s figured everything out. Allison’s not sure how that’s even possible, when she feels like she understands even less than she did that morning.  


Isaac slips onto the couch beside her when all of the blankets have been passed out, and she slips a hand onto his hidden knee. He smiles at her in surprise and relaxes a little against her side, and she decides she has enough figured out for right now.  


*  


It shouldn’t be such a struggle to get everyone back home in the morning, but it really, really is. Scott and Stiles have a “bro date,” and Stiles refuses to accept any diversions, so Scott throws his dirt bike in the Jeep’s backseat, and Stiles does not offer Isaac or Boyd a ride home. One look at Allison standing by her car, and Boyd announces that he’ll walk home. It’s ridiculous- Boyd lives halfway across town- but Allison won’t push. The least thing she can do for Boyd is to give him space. She offers Isaac a ride, and he accepts without a moment of hesitation.  


“So, I could take you back to the McCalls’,” Allison says, halfway to the McCalls’ already, smiling wickedly.  


“You could,” agrees Isaac.  


“Or, I could park the car and let you make out with me in the backseat.”  


“I don’t know if I get a vote here,” Isaac smirks, “but I’m totally in favor of option two.”  


“That’s good,” Allison pulls into the parking lot for one of the old hiking trails in the preserve. “That’s what I picked too.”  


She waits for Isaac to crawl into the backseat, laughing warmly as he struggles to pull all his long limbs between the front seats, before she locks the doors and slips back to join him.  


“No fair,” Isaac grumbles for the sake of grumbling. “Nobody should look good crawling around in cars, but you do. It’s supposed to be awkward.”  


Allison settles down with her knees framing Isaac’s hips, one hand braced against his chest. “If you want to complain, I can get off and we can chat back here,” Allison offers, rolling her hips down against his. “Really, I don’t mind.”  


Isaac gulps. “I can just complain later.”  


“You sure?”  


He leans up to pull Allison down into a kiss, scraping his teeth along her bottom lip. “I’m sure,” he says, voice rumbling like a growl in his chest. With her hand braced against him, she can feel the way he speaks, the way he breaths. She can feel every beat of his heart under her palm as his pulse speeds ever quicker. In the tight confines of her car, it’s a heady thing.  


She pushes him back down, back flat against the leather seats, and pulls out of the kiss, leaning down to kiss a lazy trail down his throat. Isaac moans something unintelligible that sounds like encouragement when she nips at the arch of his collarbone and drags fingers along the hem of his shirt.  


“Allison, what are we doing?”  


“Well,” she answers, matter-of-factly, “I was planning on going down on you in a minute, if that’s alright.”  


“No, I mean,” Isaac interrupts, than cuts himself off abruptly. “Wait! Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying no to that, okay? Because, God, Allison, that’s more than alright.” Isaac pauses, running a shaky hand through his hair. “What I was trying to say was, no, I didn’t mean ‘what are we doing right this second in your backseat,’ I meant, ‘what are we doing in general?’”  


“Okay, just to clarify, you do want me to go down on you then?” Allison laughs. Isaac was adorable when he got flustered.  


“Oh, absolutely,” Isaac says immediately. “You know, we can totally talk later if you want, that’s fine, too.”  


“No, maybe we should talk now.” This talk had been a long time coming, and it would be good to clear the air. She’s still not entirely sure what exactly she wants, but she’s sure she wants him.  


“Right, but if we’re going to have a serious conversation, it would probably be easier if you weren’t still straddling me.”  


“Absolutely.”  


She crawls off of Isaac to take the seat next to him. She waits. This ball is in his court.  


“So, what?” he asks, after a moment of thought. “Do we just hook up now, whenever?”  


“Is that what you want?” Allison asks.  


“I don’t know, is that what you want?” Isaac returns. He is evasive almost all of the time, but it’s never been this frustrating.  


“I don’t want a boyfriend,” Allison answers. “Not because I’m still hung up on Scott or anything, I’m still trying to deal with my whole family legacy and cope with everything I did last spring. I’m just not interested in dating right now.”  


“I get it.” He looks minutely disappointed, like he was taking her words as rejection.  


“But that doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in you.”  


“Right, okay,” Isaac nods. “What does that mean?”  


“It means that I like you, and being with you and kissing you, but I’m not in a place where I think it would be good for me to date.”  


“So, what? Are you talking about a friends with benefits kind of thing here?”  


“Maybe?” Allison shrugs. “I don’t know what you want. But I kind of want you.”  


Isaac blinks, taken aback. Sometimes, she thinks she is too blunt and upfront, that she doesn’t mince her words enough. A slow smile breaks across Isaac’s face and it’s absolutely gorgeous, and she decides that this isn’t one of those times she regrets her bluntness.  


“I definitely want you too,” he nods. Isaac still looks a little bit awed by her declaration, like hearing that he was wanted was something strange to him. It probably is, and she resolves to tell him that she wants him as much as she can for as long as it’s true.  


“So what are we?” Isaac asks.  


“Well, we’re not dating, but we’re not just friends, either.”  


“Friends with benefits?”  


“I guess,” Allison considers, “but maybe not publicly, but maybe with strings attached? Like, secret exclusive friends with benefits. Is that alright with you?”  


“That is more than alright with me,” Isaac laughs.  


“It just seems, I don’t know, easier if we don’t make a big deal about it, you know?” she says, thinking of the way Scott still looked at her.  


“Yeah,” Isaac winces minutely. “I know.”  


“Still want to make out in the back seat?”  


“That’s alright with me too.”  


*  


It is not until Isaac creeps in through her bedroom window, eyes pink and voice thick, that Allison learns that Boyd has been killed.  


“Is it okay that I’m here?” Isaac asks, hunched in on himself like an arch.  


“Did something happen?” Allison responds immediately. Obviously something has happened, she realizes the moment she asked. Isaac hates vulnerability, barely trusts anyone to see him when he feels weak, and this was the most broken and bare she’s ever seen him, even worse than when he’d nearly killed her in a claustrophobic panic attack.  


“They killed Boyd,” Isaac hisses, eyes flaring gold. His hands curl into fists, and the barest streams of blood drips from both palms.  


“Oh my God,” Allison gasps, barely processing the information.  


Isaac stands in the center of her room, the legs of his pants dripping wet, and looks at her like he can’t even see her. He opens his mouth to speak, but his voice breaks on his own words, and all that comes out of his throat is a broken choke.  


“Hey, c’mere” Allison soothes, pushing off her bed and taking steady, measured steps towards him. She winds her arms around Isaac, curling one hand around the back of his neck to look him in the eyes. “Is this alright?”  


Isaac doesn’t answer. He blinks and stares at her as if he hasn’t noticed her at all until now, then pulls her flush against him to kiss her. He feels frantic against her, kissing into her mouth desperately like he wants to swallow her whole, like he thinks that if he pours enough of himself down her throat he could forget seeing his friend’s body dead on the ground. Allison is too taken aback to do anything but go along with it, letting Isaac push her lips open further when she gasps, threading her hands into the back of his shirt and the curls at the nape of his neck.  


“Isaac, what?” Allison asks, completely bewildered. “What are you doing?”  


“I just,” Isaac stutters, “I need…”  


Allison waits, willing to let him figure everything out himself.  


“I don’t know what I need right now,” he says after a while’s thought. “But I want you.”  


“Not like this,” Allison says, taking a half step away. “I want you too, Isaac, but not like this.”  


Isaac stares at her, breath hitching in his throat, and his shoulders heave with the effort of keeping everything inside of him. He looks like he’s been on the verge of tears longer than anyone should, like he hadn’t stopped to grieve since he’d watched Boyd die. With a sudden shock of understanding, she realizes that this was the first place Isaac had gone after he’d watched his last friend die. She can’t pretend to know what that meant, just yet.  


“Isaac, come here,” she beckons, tugging at his hand to pull him onto her bed beside her, shifting against the blankets until they were slotted together side to side. Maybe later she’ll wonder when he’d started trusting her enough to come to her first in crisis, maybe that would feel important later. “Do you want to talk about it?”  


“Boyd’s dead,” Isaac answers. He’s trying to snap at her, but he can’t muster enough feeling to sound anything but broken. “What is there to talk about?”  


“I’m so sorry, Isaac.”  


“So am I.”  


Allison doesn’t say anything else, just let Isaac sit against her quietly and let him rest his head against hers, where hers was tucked on his shoulder. Eventually, Isaac breaks down into silent, shaking sobs, and she slips her hand into his own. This isn’t the worst part, she remembers, but it nearly is; it’s second only to the realization that, after the funeral, you’ll never see them again. The last time she had mourned, she’d nearly killed Isaac, and she promises herself that she won’t let him drive himself mad with grief the way she had. Isaac gasps, and the tears come harder. Allison runs a hand through his hair and squeezes his hand and spends the rest of the night letting Isaac cry into her.  


In the morning, they wake up tangled together on top of her sheets, and she doesn’t say anything. Allison just holds his hand and pushes back his curls and waits until he’s ready to talk.  


*  


And then, at last, it all falls into place when Deaton asks Isaac to be her tether. She looks at him and just knows, he was always going to be the one to pull her back.  


“Is this alright?” Allison asks, ignoring everyone else to look up at Isaac. The look in Scott’s eyes wasn’t so much accusatory as it was of sudden comprehension, like he’d finally understood everything he’d been noticing for months, and Lydia just smiled.  


“Yeah,” Isaac answers. He doesn’t smile, but stares at her with the single-minded focus he sometimes gets, as if there is nothing else in the room but her. “Of course it is.”  


“You look scared.”  


“It’s just,” he trails off, running a hand through his curls. “Allison, it’s- what if I’m not enough to pull you back?”  


Maybe she should have realized this when she was the one he came to when Boyd died, or when Isaac was the one to talk her down when her father sacrificed himself, but there was something there, a very real emotional connection between them.  


She pushes up onto the tips of her toes and tugs his head down to hers, kissing him chastely. “You’re more than enough, Isaac.”  


He pulls her back to life, and everything is alright.  


fin.


End file.
